Streetlight Records in Noe Valley and Open Mind in the Castro Shutting Their Doors

Walking past Open Mind Music on Market Street recently I noticed a "shop closing" notice in the window, and now, courtesy of the All Shook Down blog on SFWeekly, comes notice that Streetlight Records is closing its flagship store in Noe Valley.

I've been chronicling the demise of record shops in San Francisco ever since I started this blog, and it seems that the trend will only continue. Having shopped in both Streetlight and Open Mind, I get the sense that what did them in was having a breadth of stock that required a large space, but that didn't, in the end, generate enough throughput to keep up the rent. I think that, for record stores to survive, they're going to have become small, niche-focused businesses that don't keep a lot of outdated stock on hand (there were several dozen square feet of Open Mind dedicated to old dance vinyl that, even at 99 cents each, nobody would really find that interesting). There will always be audiophiles who want their favorite Pink Floyd albums on high-quality vinyl, but fewer and fewer people are going to want to pick up The Wall on vinyl that's over twenty years old when you can get the same album on CD for pretty cheap (or just download it from eMule). I think that we have also entered into an era in which consumers are less interested in albums and are more likely to just buy individual tracks that they like; buying a whole album of stuff when you only really want one or two tracks seems to make about as much sense to a modern consumer as buying 8-track tapes that you can't rewind.

Reverb Records is Now Shaxul

On a recent trip to the Haight I noticed that Reverb Records, arguably once ground zero for the San Francisco rave scene, and one of the few DJ records stores that branched out beyond house to drum and bass, trance, and even psytrance, is now Shaxzul, which specializes exclusively in black metal music. (I think the name is a smoosh between "Shazam," as in Captain Marvel, and Xul, as in Ghostbusters. Say it with me now, "Shaxul!")

This brings to three the number of specialist DJ record stores I know of that have folded since I started this blog (Zen City Records and BPM Records are the other two). I think this is enough to now say that we're seeing a trend, one in which the DJ record store is becoming increasingly irrelevant in the face of new media technology. When I think of the DJs I know, almost all play CDs, and almost all get the majority of their music though downloads. I even made, and wrote about, my own switch from vinyl to CDs, in the past few months.

It's easy enough to bemoan this trend, since the DJ record store provided a lot more to its patrons besides just a commercial channel for the music industry - it's always fun to listen in on the conversations between patrons and shop owners, to get unexpected reccomendations from same, and to just pass the time listening to a lot of new music. The internet makes it easy to get new music, and lots of it, and CDs are a far more convenient medium than vinyl, but then there's also the phenomenon of blog house, where everybody is reading, and downloading, from the same music blogs and the same online sources - one of the best things about the DJ record shop is the specific eccentricity of the owners, where you know where to go for a certain sound, but you never know exactly what you'll find in the bins.

I'm curious to see if the market has finally shaken out enough that there's now a profitable ratio between the number of DJ record buyers versus record shops, or whether we're watching the demise of an entire commercial sector, like the dry goods store. The only record stores I know of that are still selling new DJ vinly are Soundworks on Valencia, which is undoubtedly shored up by its close ties to the Castro scene and its record pool; Tweekin' Records on Haight, which stocks local labels like Dirty Bird and has been my source for techno and tech house; and Amoeba, which has a great selection but you can't listen to any of it. I guess it's a good thing I decided to start focusing on CDs, since it seems like I might eventually have been forced in that direction anyway.

"Is Vinyl Dead?"

Last night my friend J posed that question and I found myself with a split opinion; on the one hand the vinyl DJ in me thought "of course not," while the guy who had just bought a pair of Pioneer CDJ-800s thought "well, maybe not dead, but looking pretty pale."

I bought the CD players after several years of being a vinyl-only DJ because I realized that the economics of DJing have changed considerably over the past few years, and there was no way I could keep up with current music otherwise. While I was able to obtain maybe ten tracks a month at a cost of $11 each, the boyfriend was going up to music blogs, using Bit Torrent, and buying tracks from Beatport at a range of $1.99 to $2.49 each. When he had a gig coming up he could put together a huge collection of almost completely fresh tracks for far less than the five or six new tracks I would buy for the same sort of occasion. The final straw, though, came when the only record store in town that reliably stocked the music I was into AND provided listening stations, BPM Records, went out of business. I can still rifle the minimal bins at Amoeba, but without any way of previewing tracks before I buy them, I'm essentially betting money that my admittedly limited knowledge of artists and labels will help me pick consistent winners. Past experience has demonstrated that this is patently not the case.

As a mobile DJ who has schlepped gear for numerous events over the years I was also drawn to the convenience of CD players over turntables; for me the turntable is still the preferred instrument, but there's no denying that CD players are lighter to lug and far more forgiving of difficult conditions. Years ago, before my conversion to the dark shiny stuff, I was at an outdoor where a friend was playing records and began to have problems because of the heavy fog that had come in and was leaving drops of moisture on everything, including his records. I teased him about it, saying that CD players were far superior for adverse environmental conditions, even though years later I would be trying to protect my tonearms from being blown off track by gusts of wind coming off the playa. Ever since I began having to bring my own turntables to parties I have been aware of just how much space they take up, how heavy they are, and how tempermental they can be under the influnce of, say, a hundred people bouncing up and down on a wooden floor.

Of course, the convenience, in terms of music acquisition, afforded by digital tracks has some drawbacks as well. I'm indebted to Pee Play for introducing me to the term "blog house," the sort of music that proliferates through blogs like missingtoof.com, bigstereo.com, hypemachine.com, and others, that, while it might be of dubious quality, still becomes immensely popular because of the fact that people download it and play it. And, as I have discovered for myself, while the Top 100 charts of Beatport provide an easy way to scope out what's getting people's attention, it also engenders a degree of homogeneity among those same people. It's easy enough to find ways to obtain digital music, but I still think there's something about the process of crate digging at your favorite record store that yields a more individualistic set. Also, being able to hear an entire track, or at least the breakdown and return, is so much nicer than having to suss out the entire vibe of a track from a three-minute selection.

And, as far as playback devices go, while the CD player may offer a number of advantages in regard to space, weight, and environmental conditions, you have to remember that, in terms of functionality, the whole point of technological advances with CD players is to make them "play" more like turntables. There are some functional aspects of the CD player that I really like; instant cue return is great, being able to set a consistent "platter speed" eliminates the problems you have with records that are of different weight, and once you set the tempo, they'll steady as a rock; but, when it comes time to true up the beat-matching between two tracks, I have yet to find the combination of settings that give me the same level of haptic feedback and control as turntables.

I don't think vinyl is dead, but digital music is certainly forcing its adherents to consider the basis of their loyalty. As for me, I've still got the turntables set up in the bedroom, and I will still use them when I'm practicing at home or recording as set; but when it comes to time to play out I'l l probably only be carrying a book of CDs, and you can bet that the tracks I've recorded from vinyl will be well-outnumbered by those that I've obtained via download.